Inductance measurement methods for position estimation in permanent magnet synchronous motors

This paper considers the model-based position estimation for sensorless control of permanent magnet motors. Model parameters need to be accurately measured or estimated to ensure adequate performance of the vector control scheme. Here the attention is focused on the measurement of motor inductances and on their impact on the sensorless drive performance. Some procedures for inductance measurement, selected from the related literature and mentioned by the recently introduced IEEE Standard 1812-2014, have been considered and implemented on a motor prototype. The obtained inductance values have been used to implement a simple position observer. The quality of the inductance measurement is assessed evaluating the position observer estimation error obtained with experiments on a permanent magnet prototype.